Emotional Sobriety and the Spiral of Self-Pity – Kelly B.

Good morning, my name is Kelly. I'm an alcoholic. And of Marmon, Indiana, French Flick. So I get the call, you know, come to French Flack. And so I got off to my sponsor. Now, my sponsor's from Fox, okay? So you know where this is going, right? Well, he's around, he've got all these Fox owners around down here in St. Petersburg, you And they're all steelworkers, you know, from Boston, you know. They're standing around, and I look to them, and I go, who is Tony? You know, Tony's so beautiful. You know what I never thought of in my whole life. And he goes, you don't? And I go something like, pretty cool. And everybody looks at me, and they go, Larry Bird! Larry Bird. Larry Bird? And I'm like, Gary Bird. And it's just, so I say to her, I just want him up there for you. She goes, you want to call me Larry Bird? I go, no. I bet he's just a speaker. He is. He is, and then it was, let me all, you know, read off who he is. So if any of you here have paid to see Larry Bird, could you tell a bunch of people in the box to say hi? Yeah, I'm not pleased to be here. I certainly am pleased to be here at the turning point. When I got the call to come here, I heard that it was Tali that was supposed to be there and I just said, well, it's really just Tali. And anyway, Tali had gone on the case because the people who sponsored her insisted going on a cruise to take care of herself because her husband, Dave, and we always have to be committed to do this by the way, she wants to send her love to all of you today and tell us that he is moving here today. And she says, I'm taking care of Dave, and Dave is free of cancer. And he's such a precious, precious man. What happened was whenever he went in to have this operation, he had a big tumor. The doctor told him when you have a tumor that big, what happens when you cut it out? Maybe some of the stuff might go through your bloodstream. So they set him up on four chemotherapy treatments that are three weeks apart. And then Paul, I was trying to see if I could have some signs in my chemotherapy. And this is what she did. She had a cure for everything from February to May. That's all. Anyway, she wanted me to let you know that Dave is free at 84 in Massachusetts. He told me that we were going to do it. Other than that, what we're here to talk about is emotional sobriety now. I said to Dolly, I said, Dolly? I'm writing a publication for you, so I thought, oh, she's writing. What should I say? And I'm like, okay, and I'm going to write another one of those books, too. So Holly takes me for after the pieces. Oh, Kelly, just telling you stories. Not a story about me, I don't know. So I thought well, that's not good enough, and I went to my sponsor and my co-sponsor, And I thought, yeah, you know, we're going to go talk about the spiritual society. And I'm like, oh man, I don't know what he's saying. You know? And my father would say to Kelly, you've had a worse recovery than a lot of people struggling with it. He says, you haven't had bonds in recovery that people couldn't even conceive of while they were out there. in recovery that people couldn't even conceive of while they were out there drinking. She said, you're going to do okay. I said, yeah. I go, okay. So the one thing that I wanted to talk about this morning was emotional hangovers. Now, in sobriety, I was waking up with a lot of emotional hangover. And they would bring me into a paralyzing fear. I was just being in a fetal position, in total deep depression, in my home, not wanting to answer the door. I just didn't want to answer anything. And I know I'm the only one in this room that's constantly there, OK? And it turns into what happens is It cuts into this vow of anger, whether it's justified or not. And it goes into the poor me. And I was totally into self-kidding when I got here to Elko. It's synonymous. And you know, I would like to be in self- kidding, you know? I would have liked to be a self-cidding. We're going to cover all that in these two workshops. And we're going cover every one of these. We have emotional, a variety of contexts that we're going to go through. There's a lot to cover. A lot to come, believe me. And there is one I kind of would like to go over. It's called, and I know that it doesn't happen in your group here, but certainly I can see you can use that word too. It's call intolerance. And intolerance is not being equal. It's for switch. If you want to be drunk, unhappy, unpopular, and unattached to AA, try intolerance. You may depend on it for these results, OK? Now in our group, there's a little meeting that we have called Monday Night World Famous Monday Night Speakers Meeting And then you have Ben, who seems to deserve a civilian speaker meeting. Okay? And when we started that a few years ago, we started it because we wanted to pattern after the California meeting because a couple of us had moved there from California and we wanted start a California meeting. So there were seven of us that started that meeting. Well, all of a sudden more people started coming in. And all of the sudden one night this person brought somebody who was present at the meeting. And all the sudden everybody thrashed the door. Oh my gosh, that person is disturbing the meeting! Well, you know, he can drink and eat the drunk, you now. Well we got him out of the meeting, you don't want him in the meeting disturbing the And I remember my father standing up saying, I'm going to be dying. I'm gonna be through again. This is alcoholic genomics. You know? Alcoholic genomics? We're going to get some wet drugs from here, you know? It's OK. We'll go live through it, you now. So they left a little drug to stay, you know? Anyway, 16 years later, he's secretary of our group. Yeah. You know, we're patients in this room. We're patients. All of us are patients in this room and I've got to remember that no matter how many years of sobriety I get, I'm a patient in this world. By the way, they report Thanksgiving after I celebrated 33 years of sobriety. And last June, I turned 73 years old. And except for major heart attack, open-heart surgery, acid reflux, and dying twice on operating tables, okay? I'm as spicy as I've ever been. Yeah! Woo-hoo! Thanks to the program, the alcoholics love it! Yeah, and so, you know, so here we are, you now, starting this new meeting, you And if you've ever gone into a meeting and all of a sudden it's over, the people are out there looking at the one person in the meeting and they go, I don't think she's real, you know. So we had one in there and me, I'm probably, you know, one of the most spicy people in the People in the right place came down to us anonymously and said, you Kelly, the steps might never work for you. You need to stay in disturbance. You get in disturbance, that's the only way you're going to make it anywhere because you are so destructive. You know, men who have been with you, loved you, you're destructive, destructive, destructive. But if we can get you back when you disturb us and keep you in the ruins away from us And so, you know, it's probably up there for a lot of my girls, you might have a chance, you know. And I remember, I was just sort of, sort of in love with her, you now, when I was about 10 years sober, or about five years sober. Sending her to service. I was one of the people that put the first women and children's recovery home together in the world. We had a guy by the name of Bud McDonnell, it was his first home in the world and he came up with the concept and we thought it was a great idea. And somebody grabbed ahold of me and they said, hey, we'll just start real estate brokers, at least by And we went over and together, we got together, and this concept became a reality. And we put together a whole call to support us, and we're here. And what was so wonderful about that, you know, we cried, but it's always on. It's women up, women from the streets. Can they come in there? It's been a little difficult for me, but it's been very meaningful particularly. And what has happened with me is that my children have been taken away from me by the great state of California for the rest of my life and I will never return. And I felt such a privilege being part of that. And from that, totally how hundreds of women and their children have gone free to stay together as a family. How their children weren't taken away from them. They got to stay with each other. And so that's what we're doing today. So, woo! Woo! I didn't know I was going to say that. Woo! Slapshot. So anyway, here we are in the meeting right now. that fights me and people are trying to kind of contain me into the service and my conscience said, yeah you probably need to stay in service. And he had a way with me, you know. He just thought I'm not even going to work for you so stay in the service. I'm going to show him. Yeah. And so I did. I went and I saw somebody. I started looking for steps. One day I walked up to him by that time, and he was blushing. And he got all the crazy ones. Believe me, you know, you hear, oh, you're a fancy baby, and it's like one of the craziest people in the world. Here we are. They're right here. Anyway, I go up to them and specifically walk up to her, and I go, no, thank you, but you're so sexy. You know, that's really what I said to him, how did you study this section? And he said, well, it's a lot of fun. And I said, what do you mean? He said, I think every day in the world there's two books for the 12. So that was all. And I'm like, . And he was real quiet. And he really worried me. He was very quiet. And he turned around at me and started looking at me. He put his hand under my shoulder. He was just telling the people in Alcoholics Anonymous, which you would work as well, except for Alcoholics Anonymous. So I wasn't the most brash person in the meeting, you know? And so I sit in this meeting that we started and it was very small when we started. We're well over 300 people now, which is basically the same thing we And anyway, I'd sit there, and there was this little lady in the meeting. And whenever we'd be reading, you know, taking a trip, not taking a trip, you go, I'm a brother, you have? And I go, yeah! And she would reach over behind her significant other and clap me on the back of the head, you know. And I was a guest. I had more time than her, you know. And then whenever they'd say, Nashville Lions, you know, I go... I thought that was one lady we knew, you know, how to get her to go to Elkville Medical Center. And then it's so wonderful, my spouse has said, you know, in these multiple and synonymous meetings, we need to be inclusive. We are an inclusive society. And today, in that meeting, you know, it's so full and so packed full of people. We have the hearing impaired. And we have a signer who sits up in front, okay? And with the hearing-impaired people, you can't hear, so just let you sign. Well, there's one little guy—oh, but that's for me. My tongue isn't right now, but I'll call him like that, okay. Anyway, there's this one little guy that comes here and he's got a single dad, okay? A single father. So what he does is he brings his little girl and this little girl swings him all over the house and people look at another person in the meeting and they go, Why did you fire that kid down? And he says, Hello! So, a bunch of the women have taken upon themselves that one of the little girls is called a rowdy. They go over and they pick her up, and they take her outside, and each play with her outside. And we start bringing her in both to play on the very full earth. The keeper told the dad he's going to be in a meeting about a couple weeks from now. So tolerance, like a spiritual lubricant. We use this friction as you can see, A running through the wood. on its bearings of humility and service. Humility and service was not just to build a bond collar without it being located. Now, the point that I have studied, okay, I'll tell you what happened, okay? As soon as I found out I was going to do this movement for Friday workshop, I remembered The answer is that there was a book called When We Took the Horse, and I had been in a meeting. It was a big book meeting, you know, a big-book thing. It was the weekend. John St. Peter's Burgers called it. A big bookmeeting on the beach. And they gave you a ticket whenever you walked in, and they had the raffle. Whoever won won a copy of the book, you know what each of the others. And this guy had donated his book, and it took him a week or so much for him to buy one of the books that, as of 1995, I'm going to talk you through this book, right? And I put it on the shelf like we do, right, plus pages are yellowed, OK? So the minute I found out I was going to do this, I thought, I better find that book. So I ran, and I looked in my book, and there it was. Loyal Rules for Language of the Heart. And so I opened it up to National Sobriety, the next frontier in national sobriety on page 236, Language of a Heart. And one of the things it says, even then as we view away, peace and joy may still elude us as we're in the program about the whole economy, peace and joy may still elude us. That's the place so many of us AA-holsters have come to, and it's a hell of a spot, literally. How shall our unconsciousness, from which so many of our fears, compulsions, and phony aspirations feel free be brought into line with what we actually believe now and once? How to convince our dumb, raking, and hidden Mr. or Mrs. Tide becomes our main task. You know, how to quell that. And Bill writes, because I had over the years undergone a little spiritual development, the absolute quality of his rightful dependency, talking about dependencies on people, places, things, It came in doubt for all its synonymous, and I could not survive by my own. I had to be pretended on two little places and seen, but I had no background. Oh my goodness, it was a horrible challenge, a horrible, horrible challenge. I mean, you know, my death was up here before me. And I thought, I'm just going to say, I'll tell what you've got when I post this. Okay, I'm not going to do anything. I'm going to... See, as I was growing up, okay? As I was a growing up kid, by the way, I was born in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. Go Steelers! Whoa! Go Steeler! Yeah. So, um, I come from a very strong, okay, my family wants me to know that I come Yeah. I've come from a long line of steel workers, and the women in my family, they were born to be wives and mothers, and that's what my family did. I come from an upscale Catholic family, a huge Catholic family. Yeah. And the women our family was the fiercest strength that kept our family together. We're not rich. You know, I didn't know we were so poor. Because we were a big American family. I had no idea we were poor. But something happened when I was real young and it didn't happen in families like mine. What had happened was my mother and father got a divorce. Now, in Catholic families of our kind you don't get a divorce, you don' t carry your ass through it. Okay? So, that's one thing. And the other thing is, you have to be very careful about what you do. You have to make sure that you're doing the right thing. You have a lot of money. You have money. You have all the resources. You have everything. You have the money. You've got everything. You've been through a lot. You've done this. You've seen this. a divorce. Now, in Catholic families of our kind, you don't get a divorce, you don't carry your last words, okay? And I was taken as one of my grandmothers. So, I attended the women's of the family when I was very young, one-eighth, and what happened was I had sat down, completely sat down And I would hear my aunts and my grandparents. My mother had taken off to go to California. She was an aspiring actress. She divorced my father and went to Boston, actually. And she was working in Vegas also. Anyway, so this family of Catholic women would sit around my grandmother's breakfast table and they would talk about my mother. I loved my mother, and I would sit there. And it was just killing inside of me to hear the things about my mother. And I shut down, and then I shutdown, and we shutdowned, and we shut down. And three times we didn't shut down anymore. I was just like a living dead. And the feeling of abandonment came from that. And my father, okay being a good Catholic, So they, I mean, I've had aunts that were, you know, in the Notre Dame order of Catholic nuns. I mean it's real Catholic, Catholic. So my father, he was young and he met another lady, Stella, and she was a big Catholic. Well, they wanted to get married. And if any of you Catholics are here, you already know where I'm going with this, okay? So, yeah, you have, you now what I'm talking about. So here I am, a little old fellow, and I come to find out that my father had to go to Dyson in order for him, for it to be okay for me to marry Stella and put into going with her wife. So now Sarah was abandoned by my father and I was brought apart. So, you know, I get the alcoholics synonymous. Now my family, let me tell you something, my family just did the best they could for me, okay? They gave me the most love they could give me. But back then I started with a character defect. Back there when I got on, I started the character defect and that character defect I'm going to talk about before get into the self-strategic part of them, is criticism. Okay? It inoculates our minds with rumors, gossip, fault finding, intolerance, jealousy, rebellion and resentment that's going to get into all of us. It spreads unwanted suspicion. It It killed AA unity criticism. Well, I started learning criticism back when I was a little child because in order for me to sit up at the table with the rest of the ladies, I had to stand up and help my mother. And it tore me up inside. And I learned as we talked into the paper, I learned that if I was going to have a roof over my head and live with one of my relatives, I learned whatever it was they believed in, I'd have to go along with it. I found out that's the way that he used to live. So anyway, I learned at a young child we still had a unique role as patients, interns, nurses, doctors, treating our illness, illness under the care of God as we understand him. And that's why it's so important that we that we are patients in this room. Who are we to criticize anybody? We had a girl come into our meeting, and she was straight here in the living room. And all of a sudden, the gossip got around about her. She's on drugs. Oh my God! Oh my gosh! Outside issues. We have no opinion, but you should have heard everybody else. Oh, oh Lord! Then she knocked I guess you'd like to refer to drugs. Those darn doctors, let's criticize them next, you know? Because we have no opinion on outside issues. You know, I'm not a doctor. I don't tell people to get on drugs. I don' t tell people to give off their drugs. You know? I don''t have any opinion on it, you know? They come into meetings with alcoholics and I'm going to say, yeah, I''m crazier than a whip, but I'm an alcoholic. What are we going to do? We'll have to take a sit down, you you know, and maybe one of these days everything's going to work out for you, you know? So, you now, and I remember when I was first in the meeting, I was crazier than I looked too. I came in and all of a sudden the moods were taken away from me. And I was crazy. And people were coming up and they were saying, Kelly, You need to go outside and I go, but I'm three days sober, you need to get outside and help me. And somebody said, I talked to your sponsor about it. And my sponsor told me, you know, like, you're a little bit too crazy for me. And I sobered up in a little town called Downey, California. Anybody know where Downey is? Yeah! All right. Downey California. Okay. Real nice desert community. But I soberd up on a place called Snakepit. And I had the animals from there. And Snakepit was a wonderful place for me. I slid right in there and boy it was wonderful. The Snake Kid in those days was bilingual, and I don't know, it would not go well, but anyway, we were bilingual in the Snake Kid. And I was bilingual in other states. I spoke Bulgarian English. And there was a little old guy in the Snakes Kid named Merle. And Merle, whenever he'd hear, he would talk louder than I did. And I would hear Merle. You know? I would here him at the apartment. And I was like, yeah. I'm Merle! Anyway, nobody in Downey would sponsor me. And as I walk into and I walk in to a meeting and I sit down, all of a sudden everybody just moves away from you. that energy, you know? All that energy I had. I was crazy. I had these big, crazy eyes, you know. And anyway, finally there's this little lady in the church house. Her name is Eileen. And Eileen was a Catholic school teacher. A real tiny city, okay? And Eilean got a hold of me one night and she said, Kelly, I don't know what's going to happen to you He says, I'm going to take you to a meeting on Thursday night at the Women's Club. And I go, oh my goodness, I am so important. I just love this meeting with the women's clubs. He says yes, come on, we're going to go there. He takes me to this women's club. He took me right up to the front row, which could have been a four-inch meeting. It's not something that happens. And so anyway, then I dialed the community cell and he tells his story. And this one is the craziest thing that I've ever heard in my life. I couldn't believe he was telling these things about himself to these people, that he had been in a house and snuck out to his ex-husband's and that he has escaped from it or tried to escape but they caught him and he was running down on some white thing with his rear end hanging out and there was flat land and I would say, And I was thinking that, and everybody told me how he had gotten out of that tough test with the same asylum. And now he was the Executive Director of a Midnight Mission on Skid Row. And I'm like, wow, part of a powerless, yeah. And it got to the point where I said, you know what? I don't want to do this anymore. He told me how he had gotten out of that stuff, texted me and sent me a file on him. And now he was the executive director of the Midnight Mission on Skid Row. I was like, wow, part of a power list, yeah! And the guy gave me hope that night. And that night, he walked over after the meeting and said in the front row, I didn't know that he was supposed to go up and take me, but he came down to the church and somebody called him up. So he came over and he took my hand and he goes, so I call you. And I go, how do you know my name? And I'm like, oh, we got the phone together. And he goes so why don't you give me a call tomorrow. My phone number is 213-64-1258. Why don't you give me a call tomorrow?" And I called, and he said, Look, nobody in Downey wants to spot you. Why don' t you come down and get a picture with me? And I go, where at? You know, everybody knows where I'm at. Of course I want to see you through the streets. And then I get this. Okay, come down to the park here this noon and I'll buy you a taco and just slam your phone down on the table and then I've got to run around and find out where it was and I look down there and I'm sitting in front of him He goes, what's your big problem today, kid? And I said, look. I said I'll tell you what it is. I said you're going to go to my sister and then he'll be locked up in the mental institution. I was like, oh. And he looked at me and he says, I got some good news for you, kid. I don't want to die, but I need good news. He says, well, first of all, they don't block this law on mental institutions from being in claims. I said, they don't? He says, no. So many locked up if you act crazy. He said, so just don't act crazy and you'll never get locked up. I go, OK. He said now I have to start dressing like a lady, acting like a Lady. When you walk into a meeting, lift your hand up, go up to another person and ask them how they're doing today. You are so self-centered and so self obsessed. He said you need to get out of that vinegar. The disease is in your head. You're crazy. I said gee, I know it. People were telling me that I was going to this doctor each year, how can I receive that? And he gets a lot of those people on the AA meds. He said, look, you come to the meeting, you dress like a lady, you act like a lady, in a year if you need anything else, we'll let you know. I go, okay. But I was like, well before I get to try to be my sponsor, okay, let me go check out this registration number. So I made an appointment with Michael Osler, right? So it's just me and him in this room, right. And he says, well, you know, I need a little more success. So I got all intimidated and started telling him about myself just over the moon. Because it's an inner mom. He's a great big guy. And I thought, oh, he must think I have such a wonderful story to kind of call in staff to hear me, you know? So I told him afterwards, he says to me, if anybody ever puts anything in your system, Each one of them called me because it would be more unfortunate than anything that took any of me in the system. He said, what alcohol could normally be used to treat for you, modern medicine and modern psychiatry could never do it for me. So I go back and told my senior responses what he said. And he said, well, tell me, what's the most important thing for you to do with a woman when you have to give an exclusive person a little self-pity? He goes, no self- pity. It's the highest form of selfishness. Which you don't understand. He goes. Oh yeah, I just can't go. I know that I'm going to get injured by my father and my mother. She never remembers me. And the student in California took my children away from me forever. He goes, yeah, and your part in your children being taken away from you? I just, well, I couldn't show up for the course. And he goes, well why not? I knew all about it. I didn't want the confrontation so I didn' t show up, you know. He goes yeah, so you allowed these children to be taken away they tell you. And I go look at him, and he goes, what's this? And I'm like, excuse me, it was about self-care, okay? And he asked, do you do a little something about self care as well? Do you do little things about self caring? He goes, I don't know about self care as well. You know, I went through some really good stuff. I think I did a little I'm going to read it to you. Yes, yes, yes. Yes, open your eyes. I guess I have to wait a minute. Oh, there we go. Self-pity is rebellion in disguise, a rebellion against circumstances and against God of will. Kill it with appreciation of the faith. And he said, what I suggest for you, Kelly, to do today, when you wake up in the morning, I want you to write three gratitudes. Three gratitudes, and as you go through them, I want to write them down, and once you go through the day, and you start to get into self-pity, I wants you to pick up those three gratitudes and I want it to read into yourself. You go, I don't know any gratitude, just one. He goes, you know, put me down is your first attitude. I go, you? Yeah. He says, I talk to people nobody else will, so I guess I'm better than you talk to them. So, uh-oh. You're in some trouble. So he said, you sit down. You know what? Right now, you're not drinking. Right now. Now, if you're coming this through and you're not thinking right now, you're doing it. You're doing so much better than most of the people out there. You know, give yourself credit. You're not preaching white news now. And he says the third one is, same thought as you have a loving and merciful God. He's just telling you, you need an merciful God, so I look at those gratitude questions. Faith is appealing for the suffering of others. mothers, but they find a little focus within us and so she's that type of person. You know, I can't explain it to other people. Beautiful, beautiful woman. And she's a nurse, you know, I think. And you have 15-year-olds always need to hang around to learn how to be a nurse. Yes, especially as our hostess. It's wonderful. The self-created growth makes use of this word. It is an extreme form just some of this was retarded by spiritual growth. My spiritual growth is nothing. So, anyway, he looks at me and he says, Kelly, you are not a victim. You are NOT a victim! I go, well, no. He goes, look, you're still alive. For God's sake, she's still alive, you are NOT the victim. And I go okay, and he said, you gotta believe me on this, I go I go, okay, I believe you, you know. He said, no, about your insanity. We've got to talk about your sanity. He says, well, I noticed you in the meeting. He said you're a woo, woo, Woo, Woo. Then I get a call from him here in the field to take it out of bed. I go yeah. And he said you were on a roller coaster ride. And I go yeah. I said that's why everybody says I need outside help. He says well here's what I want you to do, okay? Here's what I want me to do. See, we can't control it whenever we're going down in that spiral. She said, whenever you get into self-kidding, whenever anybody gets into self kidding, the first thing that happens is our spirituality goes right off the window, right? Right? Yeah. Does that make sense? Yes. And what happens when you start to spiral down a little, right, and we're spiraling? Do we have any control over that spiral? You know, we don't know how far God wants us to go." He said, So the next time that happens to you, what's your reality? Just stop going. Once you stop going, just stop going." He said You're gonna live through it. You're going to be okay. We're living. He said Then what's going to happen? You'll be okay, and then we're going to talk about this part of it someday. We're not going to talk about it today because I want to talk to talk about anger after I met him and got married, and that's when I don't talk about any of those things. But I can really talk about it out here and then. And of course we're going to have sex on Sunday too, OK? We'll meet in the, woo-hoo! Yeah, yeah, we'll talk about that. But anyway, he says just fire them down where you can't control so their lives I worked myself so into it and said, you know what? I'm going to love this for as long as it takes me. Maybe a couple hours, maybe a day. But I'm not going to give myself permission to do that. Because then what's going to happen is we're going to come out of that and you're going get angry about something. And the anger is like beating up. It's like a water spout in your inner water, a bunch of water. And all of a sudden, the boat takes off. And all the sudden, you're pulled up out of that water and you can't see anything, which And that's great to float along in this sense, you know what I mean? And he says when you start to go back up again, absolutely pull yourself down. You don't want to if you have control of pulling yourself down, because the payoff if you don't pull yourself down is that idea that you fall into. The more you pull yourself down, the less you're going to go into that spiral. And I believed him, because he was just like me. And so anyway, the next time I started to go into that relation period where I was kind of running day eight, I said, volunteer for everything, have a spirit service commitment, and walk into your room and when I walk into a room, people go, Kelly's here! Kelly's here! And I said normal. And they go, oh my God, I don't want to be rejected in order to get out of here. So anyway, I tried it and I said, well how do I pull myself down? He goes, what's the thing you hate to do? Do I have to clean metal? He goes ah-ha! I said what else? And he goes, no, you don't. He says okay, every time you start to get elated, I want you to clean the house. I mean, this is, you know, actually for me, it was a sub-bucket, you know. And he says, man, I want you to sit down and take the bill. And I started doing that. And I got on my ninth set, okay? Vincent Castillo got me over there. I was every Sunday. And I go in with a shoebox full of my bills. You know, we do it all. a yellow legal pad, who didn't say that he wanted me to know it. It was serious what I was doing. So we took the pillow out, a yellow-legal pad, and we wrote down, I took a picture out of the sign and wrote right down, who I owe money to, and how much money I have, and who I was going to pay. And again, those results were made. And then that's what we did. And that full And then I found out the minute I went down into that spiral, I didn't go down too far. Now whenever I go into a little depression, it's because I've allowed myself to get too elated over something and whenever I feel myself going in that depression, I go, okay 20 minutes, I'm going to turn on the TV, my hearing is pretty good, and now I'm like And so that's what works for me. So the self-pity is the prime diagonal. Appreciation is the antidote for this poison. Self-pitty is poison, absolute poison. Hey, um, I've been in the museum, uh, in Poland, in South Korea, in North Korea. Um, let's see what I've got here. Okay. So, here's what happened. Okay. So, I'm in a radio meeting. We start the news meeting. We took a fully out together. I mean, part of a service, part a service. Part of a separate service. And, um... I moved to, uh... St. Petersburg, Florida. Get a real estate license there. Open real estate. those that did good. And in 2001, I'm thinking about retiring, but there's another gaming company, and you don't know who we are. You know, just one more, just want more, just want one more income. And I was like, well, don't do this. Don't make so much money to retire. You're going to be okay. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And, um, and I found a street things have a lot of human on them, and I think I'm hoping to open it up on the side and do some right off the test with all the safety pieces, so if anybody knows where that is, you know, okay. Do use, I guess, a nice area, isn't it? Really nice area. We've got some big monster cones here, and our home doesn't often have this really monster cone right on the pointer of this view, color view, right? And they've had this driveway with a 40 degree trajectory on this designer driveway. And my big car parked up there. It was second to Bob's. And it was like 135 degrees coming out of that driveway, right. And something had happened to the master cylinder underneath where the oil had come out. I'm just saying you know what's going with this, right So after the open house, I gave it up my open house sign and all of a sudden I hear this big thump. And I look out and it's my car coming at me by the brake line and I tried to get out of the way and I didn't and it cut my left leg holding onto the undercarriage And what it did was it crushed my left leg, I did a tib-tib on the top and a left break on the right, rolled up my body, pulled my ribcage out of my sternum, crushed my lung, and at that point, and I know this is going to run over my head, I knew this before, I had a conscious thought, I was ever going to think in my life. I knew it. But you know what? As I ran there, all of my life and every day started slowly going back to this world of something. And I realized that all these people in El Cajon were synonymous. Everything that Jesus told me was right. I had a family here even though I'd never gotten children back. I had family here. I had gone your way. I don't do divorce police, which is great if you're a daughter of a mother. There are a lot of them. I've been to baptisms. I've gone to the parties before I came here. I had a family. You were my family too. I didn't have a full life and I'm ready to go. And they're in the car waiting for my birth. And I'm not going to freak out at your newcomers and tell you about dying or going through the white light And I'm getting right up there, and then I fall on the ground. And I had no emotional experience whatsoever. Emotional pain was gone. And I felt like I was shrouded in mud. And I couldn't wait to get out of this thing. And I got right up here. And I don't know if I can tell you this, but I got rejected from that movie. And she said, you gotta go back. And I was like, I don't want to go back, you know, you got to go back because if you come in now at least you're not. And the next thing I know my eyes opened up and this little, I'll never forget this quote you know. His name is David. Big brown eyes. And I thought, well I've seen him as much time as he's old. told them, I know. I know that you're all gay from now on." And they just kind of kicked me into heaven, you know? And I was not my eyes were just like, Oh my God! She's alive! She is alive! You know? I was bickering and I was kind of suffering. I guess I was going into surgery or something, you know? So, all of a sudden, they got that team hanging out of there. I'm going, Let me go! Just let me go, you know? They said, No, we're just here in the surgery. Anyway, I go into surgery and I come out of it and I'm in, I guess they call it ICU, is that right? Where they take you. And it worked quite well for me. Now, I have a couple of books that you can't sell long term. I have two books, one's for me and the other And he walks in and he's got a book under his arm. He walks in, pulls up the chair and says, Stephanie, I go, Chuck, what are you doing here? And I go what's that under your arm? And he goes, it's the 12 and 12, Kelly. And I'm going, well Chuck, why don't you bring the 12 and 12 into here for an issue? We're going to work on steps six and seven today. I go Chuck, I'm dying for God. for God's sake. I go, no, it's never too late. He goes, no. And he says, you know, God never slowed me down to teach you this notion of socializing. That's my 20th and 20th. And that is what we put together as a company. That was the turning point for me. And so later and every night And he was there until the 11 o'clock shift came in, and we went through the character defect. He says, Kelly, one character defect that you have is killing you right now. It's pride because you are one of those self-assured, self-centered, selfish, prideful people because I don't have much strength. I was like, you know, I'm going to give it a second chance. That's what I'm gonna do is I'm going to call an old man and let him report to my team. And I did it. I don't know how to do that. I don' t know. So I'm trying to be useful for all of you. You know, everybody's looking for me. And he goes, oh, why are you looking at me? Tell me something for it. Something, something, something. And he goes, well, I'm just going to tell you one or two questions. He goes, Kelly, you are the most upset stuff I've ever heard from you. I never really met you on the phone. I go, oh my God, when did we call up another guy? He said, what do you mean by that? I said, well you know, it's been like 20 times. And he said, yeah, Kelly. Ha ha ha ha. He ought to know he's pissed off too. He wouldn't have said that. I don't know what he was trying to say. So there I was, you know, okay, probably. And we're just about to, what are we? Just about to end in ten? Five minutes? Okay. He said that, he told Beth, like, whatever you do, you remember, I'm getting close to you, and you just shut up. You know, I just don't want to stand in front of people for five, six years. I just kind of get behind them because I have a lot of pride, you And the thing about emotional sobriety is that we want to escape that ego. Like what Chamberlain used to say, you know, our deliverance here is our separation from God. And I'm on a plane to take off. You know, I don't care if people consider me as a direction. I'm going to love life, okay? I had a little history for years. When the weather passed, I thought I would never be able to endure the loss of water. And then somebody sent me the rainbow drink and then somebody said, Kelly, God's so bad this is gone. I could accept that. But are separations in growth okay? And how are we separated from, or separated by the emotions of our own, and that's what it is. Now here's a, this is kind of what I want to leave you with this morning. We have a lot more to cover on Sunday morning. A lot more to cover. In the, this was, this is from Bill. It says in the, this is another turning point. I love this. The concept of turning points. If there's a turning point in your following program, that's always more than okay. And this is Bill, and it's so novel, I feel like. Or some of this, I think, um, 1950 to 1958. It says, in the final moment of our historic conference it seemed fitting to read from chapter 11 of Alcoholics Anonymous, these were the words we took home with us. Abandon yourself to God as you understand God. Admit your faults to him and your fellow Clear away the wreckage of your past. Give freely of what you find in violence. And in each I'll be with you and solicit your spirit, and you will surely meet some of us as we trudge the world and pass the desert land. May God bless you and keep you until the end. Thank you.